The European project "New indicators and on-farm practices to improve honeybee health in the Aethina tumida ERA in Europe"  (BPRACTICES), started in 2017 and ended in 2020, is a three-year study coordinated by the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Lazio and of Tuscany "M. Aleandri "(IZSLT), funded under the 2016 ERA-NET SUSAN call –( https://www.izslt.it/bpractices/).

The aim of the study was to improve the health of bees through the application of good breeding practices (BPA or Good beekeeping practices - GBP) and low environmental impact strategies for fighting the main bee diseases.

The novelty of this project was to identify good breeding practices in beekeeping with a view to sharing between researchers and beekeepers. This collaboration made it possible to identify effective practices from a scientific point of view and, at the same time, feasible in the daily practice of bee breeding.

In addition to ensuring sustainable bee farming, the project set itself the ambitious goal of providing consumers with important information from the apiary and the type of farming carried out by the beekeeper, in order to protect its bees and the health of consumers.

This is thanks to the creation of an application developed by Danish beekeepers  (Hive log) and to an innovative traceability system based on QRCode technology. With the latter, in fact, consumers can have many details on the jar of honey purchased, including aspects relating to the breeding of bees and the laboratory analyses carried out.

Partners

Project partner with IZS Lazio and Tuscany: the Turkish University of Namik Kemal, the Slovenian Institute of Agriculture, the Spanish Center for Beekeeping and Agri-environmental Research of Marchamalo, the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES, National Reference Laboratory for Beekeeping) and the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie.

They collaborated actively the International Federation of Beekeeping Associations (APIMONDIA), the University of Genoa, FAO with its TECA platform, the European Association of Professional Beekeepers (EPBA), the European Union Reference Laboratory - EURL) for Bee Health (Sophia Antipolis honey bee health laboratory in France) and Professor Ales Gregorc from the University of Mississippi (USA).

Source: IZSLT